The Canadiens started this ball of antagonist rhetoric rolling early, and now these Eastern Conference finals with the Rangers have become a daily exercise in verbal warfare.

Saturday at the Garden was the eve of Game 4, a day meant for practice as the Blueshirts hold a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. Yet missing was Derek Stepan, the team’s top center, still in the hospital recovering from surgery required on Friday to fix his broken jaw, sustained on a late hit from Brandon Prust in Game 3, earning the former Ranger a two-game suspension.

At least, the hospital is where coach Alain Vigneault said Stepan was, calling his availability for Sunday night’s contest as “unlikely.”

Montreal veteran Daniel Briere had a different view about the status update given by the opposing coach.

“It seems a little fishy to me,” Briere said. “It seems a little like a game.”

Forward Brendan Gallagher went a step further.

“We’re 100 percent expecting him to play,” Gallagher said. “I’ve seen some broken jaws. Usually can’t talk too much and he seemed to be talking fine. … He went in for surgery, I guess, but I don’t think it’s too serious that it’ll keep him out of the lineup, especially at this time.”

That was prefaced by a bizarre scene on the Garden ice, as Canadiens coach Michel Therrien looked up into the stands and demanded Rangers assistants Ulf Samuelsson and Jerry Dineen leave immediately — though somehow general manager Glen Sather stayed in his high perch unnoticed. Therrien said there is a “gentleman’s agreement between the two teams and the general manager that coaches are not allowed to attend practices between games. Game day is different.”

Therrien also said Rangers center Derick Brassard, who missed Games 2 and 3 with an upper-body injury and declared himself ready for Game 4, is not going on the ice with any secrets.

“We expect Derick Brassard to play and we know exactly where he’s injured,” Therrien said in French, as translated by news agency TVA Sports. “Hockey is a small world.”

That same “small world” line was used by Vigneault when he said he knew in advance rookie goaltender Dustin Tokarski was going to play for the Canadiens in Game 2, following the right-knee injury to starter Carey Price suffered in Game 1 when he was run into by Chris Kreider.

That injury was the first point of contention, as Therrien called it a “reckless play.” That was followed soon thereafter by P.K. Subban saying goalie Henrik Lundqvist was “lucky” in Game 2, when he made 40 saves, nine of them on Subban alone, in a 3-1 win.

Then came Prust’s hit, and finally the Rangers began to show a bit of emotion. Vigneault began the campaign against Prust on Friday, calling the hit “late” and “everything you want to get out of the game.” He also repeatedly said if the referees had called a penalty on the hit, Dan Carcillo’s 10-game suspension as a result of his hotheaded response to Prust would not have happened.

Briere, for one, thinks it’s all a ploy.

“It goes both ways,” Briere said, before deciding to zero in on one of the Rangers’ best players. “Ryan McDonagh is a great defenseman, but I haven’t seen someone slash as much as he does since Chris Pronger. It’s all about trying to position yourself to the referees.”

Somehow, in all of this, a game needs to be played on Sunday night.

There is no bigger game for either team, and it now has become a stage where all of this subplot can play out in dramatic fashion.